KlohsBirgit Klohs sees a partnership with her counterpart in Newaygo County as an example that she hopes can lead to greater cooperation between economic development organizations in West Michigan.

The president and CEO of The Right Place Inc. emphasizes that groups in Grand Rapids, Holland, Kalamazoo, Battle Creek and Newaygo all work quite well together now, often collaborating on specific projects.

Beyond the formal Newaygo partnership, The Right Place works with Southwest Michigan First to promote the region’s biotechnology sector, even exhibiting at a national trade show, and with Lakeshore Advantage in Zeeland on making West Michigan a national center for design and engineering.

“We play well together, and that is very much based on the goodwill and the understanding that today in the world you compete as a region,” she said.

But Klohs believes there is much more West Michigan’s economic development groups could do together via some form of marketing collaborative across a wide region or another initiative that leverages and furthers collaboration.

After all, she said, companies from outside the area and the state that are looking at a possible business investment in West Michigan aren’t too concerned with geographic and political boundaries.

“Borders are artificial barriers. They don’t mean anything,” Klohs said. “We are all joined at the hip. And if we do not act as if we are all joined at the hip, our competitors will have our lunch. It’s that simple.”

Klohs cites, for example, the Indy Partnership in Indianapolis that consists of a number of economic development organizations in central Indiana. The Indy Partnership serves as a single source of data and markets a 10-county region.

“We should, in this region, work toward that kind of a partnership. There’s no doubt about it,” she said.

St. Louis has a similar marketing collaborative covering a 16-county region — eight each on either side of the Missouri and Illinois border — as does Kansas City.

“We have got to get to that point,” she said. “If we want to stay competitive and land deals that are not just the small ones but are the bigger ones, we are going to have to do this together in some form or fashion.

“Should that be one organization? I don’t know. Should it be a marketing collaborative that’s called something else? I don’t know. To me, that’s all open,” said Klohs, who’s led The Right Place for more than 22 years.

While individual communities across the region have their own cultural identities and priorities that are unique, “there has to be somewhere in the middle a commonality where we can come around two or three issues and drive them forward,” Klohs said.

“Just like we did with Newaygo County,” she added.

Newaygo County Economic Development Office Executive Director Andy Lofgren says the potential to become part of a broader regional collaborative effort, while still focusing on local needs, is just one of the benefits to the partnership he just renewed with The Right Place.

“I look at our relationship as a way to be part of that regional dialog as well,” Lofgren said. “If we weren’t partnering with The Right Place, to be able to have that opportunity would be much more difficult.”

The partnership between The Right Place and the Newaygo County Economic Development Office, first formed in 2006 and renewed last week for another three years, “is a good start” toward further regional collaboration, Klohs said.

“This has become, to us, the standard-bearer of what can happen when you really work together,” she said.

Under the partnership, The Right Place has provided expertise in marketing, business innovation and regional development to the Newaygo County Economic Development Office.

The two organizations partnered on formation of a countywide brownfield redevelopment plan for Newaygo County — a rural and residential county north of Grand Rapids — and Right Place has included the area in its marketing efforts to prospective employers.

The Right Place’s InnovationWorks and Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center have also been active working with inventors and manufacturers in Newaygo, Klohs said.

Partnering with The Right Place enables the Newaygo County Economic Development Office to access specialized programs that it otherwise couldn’t afford to develop itself, Lofgren said. He specifically cited the brownfield expertise that Right Place has brought to Newaygo County.

Contact Mark Sanchez at marks@mbusinessreview.com, or follow him on Twitter @masanche.